Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Call it an unwanted early Christmas present for Vladimir
Putin.Last Saturday, a crowd of perhaps
as many as 100,000 people gathered in the streets of Moscow to protest against the Putin regime and parliamentary elections widely viewed as stolen; smaller
rallies occurred in other cities across Russia.It was the second time since the December 4 elections that Russians took
to the streets in mass protests, and a sign that anger over the elections
directed towards the Kremlin was not subsiding.

The rallies on the 24th were the second
state-sanctioned protests since the elections earlier in the month.Officials in the Kremlin tried to downplay
the impact of the rallies, and the amount of anger in the public, by apparently
under-estimating the size of the crowd gathered on Moscow's Sakharov Avenue.The size of the crowd was officially put at
25,000, though one reporter from the BBC said that it appeared there were more
people gathered than there had been at the previous rally, attendance at that
rally was said to be 50,000; the stretch of Sakharov Avenue where the rally was
staged is said to hold more than 100,000 people.Video from the event showed a packed street,
as well as some clever signs.My
personal favorite was one oversized placard, written in English, that said
“Where's my money Hillary?”, an allusion to a charge made by Putin that the
protesters were being paid by “Western” governments, and by US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton in particular, in an effort to undermine the Russian
state.

It seems though that Putin & Co. will have to come up
with some better rhetoric if they hope to diffuse the protest movement in
Russia.That the opposition was able to
organize a second, even larger, round of protests mostly through the Internet,
is a clear sign of the depth of disapproval directed towards the Kremlin and
Putin.The protesters are promising to
stage a third series of rallies sometime in mid-January after Russia recovers
from the New Years – Russian Orthodox Christmas holiday season, which typically
brings Russia to a halt from the end of December through the first two weeks of
January.According to a poll of those in
attendance at the December 24th rally, nine-out-of-ten say they will attend another protest rally in the future.

But even though the protest movement seems to have legs, for
the moment at least, it seems to lack a leader – at least it lacks someone who
could pose a serious challenge to Putin in the presidential elections which
will take place in March.While each of
Russia's three official opposition parties – The Communists, the Liberal
Democrats and A Just Russia – are all expected to field candidates, it is
unlikely that the opposition turning out in the streets across Russia will
coalesce around any one of them.Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov has announced that he too will be a
candidate in the elections, but he is still being regarded with suspicion as a
candidate planted by the Kremlin to draw off opposition votes.

And the Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev,
weighed in following Saturday’s rally, urging Putin to follow his lead and
retire from political life.

Mission Statement

Why A World View? Because I was frustrated by the lack of international news coverage in the American press. Sadly, foreign events usually only make the news when there’s a war or natural disaster someplace. But the world is more interconnected than ever, what happens on the other side of the globe can have a direct affect on your life. So I started this site to cover some of these stories missed by the mainstream media, and to provide analysis and context to others. And my goal is to do it in a way that you don’t feel like you need a PhD degree to understand what’s going on.